


Sea of Love

by 17826



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Beach Episode, Bonfires, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Maybe Unrequited Spock/Pike, Minor Michael/Ash, Preslash Michael/Tilly, Swimming, a tiny star wars reference because who can prove theyre not in the same universe, but srsly this is all pretty gen, set mid season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:03:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17826/pseuds/17826
Summary: The crew take some much needed R&R on a beach planet; Michael reflects on this crew that have become her family, Spock works through some stuff, and Stammets and Culber reveal a secret.Caution, may contain: garish shirts, drunken bonfires, and sleeping out under the stars.





	Sea of Love

**Author's Note:**

> Set some undetermined time after Pike became captain and before the season 2 final stuff
> 
> Title from Sea of Love by Cat Powers

"Besides, it is simply not logical to devote any time to any task except those which help us better understand Control and therefore how to defeat it!"

"It's also _illogical_ to expect a crew to work twenty-four-sev without a break and still perform perfectly," Tilly countered, "so the real difference here, between these two illogical choices, is one lets you see Pike in his speedos, and there isn't a person alive who wouldn't want to see that. Besides, Dr Culber has ordered it mandatory for all bridge crew as a stress management strategy."

There was a pause. Michael sighed.

"I hate you," she said, for the record, and Tilly laughed and leaned over to hug her, quick and with one arm. She'd been doing that more often recently.

"I'll go find out when we're due to arrive," she bubbled, looking back over her shoulder, "then you can help me pick a bikini!"

"Sure," Michael replied, a second too late. She was still not used to the response her stomach had to Tilly's acts of kindness, effortless and inclusive. Ineffable friendship, echoed the Sarek-voice in her head that she had assigned to her Earth Cultures revision at the Vulcan Learning Center. Inability to take no for an answer, but that observation was in her own voice.

She lay back on the bed, grabbing her padd to flick through the synthesizer's pre-designed swimwear options, internally rolling her eyes at the shiny fabrics and angular cuts coming in from Risa which were purported by the infobox to be the latest fashion. She selected a few options, sleek and perfunctory, setting the colourway to black on each. She'd try them on in the mirror when Tilly got back. _A bonding experience_, supplied her xenoanthropilgy degree, and she surpressed it. _Friendship_, she told herself, and ignored the butterflies in her stomach as she put aside the padd and waited for Tilly's return.

***

About two years after she'd arrived on Vulcan, Sarek and Amanda had attended the 75th anniversary of the Coalition of Planets, held in the Mediterranean coast of France, near the border with Italy. When they'd returned, Amanda had shown her holos of the château they'd stayed in, sun drenched and saturated. The warmth had almost radiated from the images themselves, and Michael could have sworn she felt the sea air on her skin through the dry heat of Vulcan. Materializing on this planet now felt like how those photos had looked. She glanced back at Spock, who impassively ignored her, and knew he was remembering the same moment.

He was wearing the same loose kaftan she was, ankle-length and airy, except where his was black, hers was a softer grey with a subtle shimmering thread woven into the cotton as a concession to Tilly's design influence. She tried not to think about the swimming costume she was wearing under her kaftan, with which she had had considerably less creative control.

Tilly herself was wearing a simple red bikini top with denim shorts, her hair glowing in the sun where together they'd wrangled it into a bun; her skin was slightly paler than usual thanks to Saru's industrial strength suncream, and her cat eye sunglasses complimented her contented grin, which Michael mirrored without thinking. Over her bikini top, unbuttoned and short-sleeved, was the most garish shirt Michael had ever seen; it was turquoise with orange and yellow flowers blooming across it at regular intervals, and it was brighter than the sky.

"This is gorgeous," Tilly said happily, echoing Michael's thoughts.

"Just what the doctor ordered," said Stammets innocently from behind them, quickly accompanied by the sound of a punch and an undignified squawk.

"Wasn't funny when we got together, still not funny now," Culber intoned dryly. Upon looking back at them, Michael discovered that the both of them were also wearing similairly kitsch shirts to Tilly, with Stammets in blue with palm trees, and Culber in a yellow shirt with whole desert islands repeating across it. Both were unbuttoned and flowing in the slight breeze.

As they joined the others, closer to the treeline, a pattern became obvious: Detmer wore a green shirt with pink flowers over her white swimming costume; Oweskun's shirt was a painted sunset over her yellow bikini; Rhys's purple shirt matched his swimming trunks with little palm tree prints; even Reno wore an obnoxious red and blue shirt half tucked into her loose swim shorts.

"Tilly, do all humans wear stupid shirts on the beach?" Michael asked quietly, leaning closer. She didn't know why she didn't want the others to hear her questions.

"Yep," Tilly said, popping the 'p' as she looped her arm through Michael's. "Well, I mean, probably not, actually, but I guess it's an American thing so it's in a lot of old movies, and it's fun!"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Michael hissed.

Tilly laughed. "Would you have worn one if I did?" She squeezed her arm and skipped off towards where Ariam and Bryce had started a game of table tennis without a table, leaving Michael to look around at the assembled crew.

They were loosely grouped into their various social circles, spread out along the treeline; most of the humans, and some of the other crewmembers, were wearing these bright shirts, but not all, and almost everyone had as much skin as possible on display to soak up the warm sunlight. Yet there were some, like Saru in his grey robes, more covered up or clearly keeping to the shade. This was where Michael thought she would be most comfortable, and as she walked towards an empty spot under a tree, she found herself falling into step with Spock.

"Brother," she said, and he nodded back wordlessly. He was doing that thing he'd done a lot as a child where he followed her but pretended that he wasn't. That used to mean that he was nervous but she couldn't seem to read him anymore.

They sat in silence, the shade of the tree providing some relief for Michael, but the air still warm enough for Spock to not have to regulate his temperature. As they watched, a group broke away from their gathering, running towards the water with a large stripey ball.

"_Water seems to bring them much joy,_" Spock murmured after a while, and it had been so long since she had heard untranslated Vulcan that she smiled on instinct.

"_That it does,_" she agreed. "_It is hard to imagine the red beaches with this kind of laughter in the air._"

"_You and mother always seemed to manage it,_" he said, neutral in that practised way, "_but you do not seem so enthused now._"

Michael looked down at her toes in the sand. "_No, I suppose it is..._" She trailed off, unsure of what answer she had. Luckily, she was saved by a minute stiffening of Spock's posture, and she looked up to see the final party arrive and start walking towards them. It was small, leaving just a skeleton crew abord _Discovery_ of those who'd not wanted to take leave and for whom it had not been deemed necessary. "_What is it?_" She looked between them, Ash and Pike and Nhan.

"_Nothing,_" Spock said, too quick by 0.67 seconds. Michael looked again.

Nhan was wearing the loose cotton jumpsuit she wore on her infrequent days off and mirrored sunglasses, her hair pulled into a ponytail and her expression calm. Ash was similairly relaxed, his own jumpsuit short sleeved and only mid-thigh, a plain maroon that suited his skin well; Michael told herself to ignore the skin visible between the neckline that plunged to his waist. On Pike, however, it was impossible to ignore the defined abs framed between another wretched yellow floral shirt and his bright red swim shorts; he seemed to glisten golden in the sunlight, towel slung over one shoulder and wearing sunglasses that made him look like a 21st century movie star. Michael looked across at Spock, who was studying the horizon intensely.

"_You certainly have a type, brother,_" she said, failing to keep the amusement out her voice.

"_I do not know what you are talking about, sister,_" Spock said calmly, "_and may I remind you we are likely not the only Vulcan-speakers among this crew._"

"_Of the original crew, I can only say Saru speaks Vulcan, and as he is currently asleep under a tree twenty meters away, I can only assume you are merely trying to end this conversation because you are uncomfortable with my line of enquiry._" Michael quirked her eyebrow in a smile she knew she got from Sarek, and Spock looked at her with the Vulcan equivalent of a glare.

"_This is not only the original crew,_" Spock said.

"_Good evening,_" called Pike as he came to a stop in front of them, laying out his towel, "_may this be a fortuitous night for us all._"

Michael blinked in surprise. "_I didn't know you spoke Vulcan, captain?_"

"That's all I got, sorry," Pike smiled, looking between her and Spock, "I learned that one phrase for a conference a while back. You can relax, Spock, I wasn't eavesdropping."

Spock relaxed. "I am at ease, captain, that is the purpose of this expedition."

"It's not an expedition, Spock, and we're not on duty so call me Chris."

"I shall endeavour to do so," Spock said solemnly. "If you would excuse me, I will take a swim while the sun is still high."

Pike smiled and gestured as if to say, be my guest. In a fluid movement, Spock got to his feet and removed his kaftan to reveal his swimming costume, black and functional, effectively a tanktop and shorts. Michael was envious.

After he was gone, Pike laid back, flicking his sunglasses up and cushioning his head on the tote bag he'd brought with him. She judged it to contain a stack of books from the shape it made, and thick ones at that. He sighed, deep and contented. "This is pretty alright, isn't it."

It wasn't a question, but Michael hummed an agreement. On their right, someone got a stereo going, playing the Federation's music station quietly into the air.

Without opening his eyes, Pike asked, "how does he seem, Michael?"

She didn't have to ask what he meant. She watched as Spock reached the rock that jutted out of the water about 15 meters into the bay, which he touched and swam away from, parallel to the shore. "It appears that you would know better than I do about that, capt- Chris."

Pike tilted his head to look up at her through one eye. "What makes you say that?"

"Before this, I hadn't seen him in four years, and we weren't all that close before then, I-" she cut herself off, shaking her head. "You two seem to have really bonded."

Pike looked at her for a moment longer, and she looked away, not quite comfortable with his unfaltering gaze when he directed it like that. "I like your brother," he said evenly, "he's clever and kind and has a unique view of the world, one he doesn't seem to comprehend the value of."

"Yes, Starfleet does seem to offer him more opportunities than anywhere else he's been," she agreed.

"That's not what I mean by value," Pike said softly, and Michael looked back to see him eyes closed once more, smiling. Michael prided herself on her ability to read others - it was what made anthropology such a rewarding subject - but for the life of her, she couldn't understand what was motivating Pike's words. Was this respect, friendship, or something more? Didn't she owe it to Spock to help him find happiness, after all she'd done?

"I may have lost touch with my brother, but it is easy to see the depth of respect he holds for you," she said tentatively, "I am sure that he would feel comforted by your encouragement."

Pike laughed. "Oh, he knows, Michael, and believe me, I've never seen a Vulcan look so horrified in all my life. Emotional affirmation is not a comfortable place for him, is it?"

"I suppose it is not the Vulcan way," Michael smiled.

"Well, he's just going to have to get used to it then," Pike said, and sat up, pulling out his books and picking one for himself, offering the rest to Michael and effectively ending the conversation.

He had an ecclectic mix; for himself, he'd chosen a French journal on the intersection between Earth Renaissance era art and Andorian romanticism, leaving a selection including a book on Jedhan religious practises, a battered copy of the Lord of the Rings, and the latest pulpy romance from Cassandra Corellia. Michael suppressed a smile and tried not to think of this as a test, choosing a collection of short stories from Romulus which offered both original text and translation. She could pass the sunny hours this way quite happily.

***

After a lunch of cool fruit, chilled inside a landing craft on a few long buffet tables, Michael found herself watching the gentle waves break over her feet at the edge of the shore. The sand sparkled as the moving water picked it up and deposited it in turn. Out in the bay, Tilly and Rhys were diving off the side of the rock, climbing higher and higher each time.

"Wanna go for a swim?"

She turned and saw Ash, face impassive and eyes fixed on her. She returned his gaze, studying his eyes for any hint of hope or trepidation. She nodded.

"Cool." Without much fanfare, he started to undress, pulling off his jumpsuit to reveal a torso mottled with scars, as if someone had removed each of his ribs in turn before replacing them, but they were not old enough to have been from the Klingon prison. Michael forced herself not to react, and instead pulled her kaftan over her head, folding it and depositing it on the ground just out of reach of the waves. Ash dropped his clothes, unfolded, next to hers.

Together, they turned and walked into the water; it was cool compared to the air but not unpleasant. "I like your swimming costume," Ash said.

Michael consciously didn't blush. She forgot what she'd been wearing, this silly, low-cut, backless thing. "Thank you," she said anyway, "Tilly's choice, style 225, leaf pattern, jade colourway."

"I'll keep that in mind," and Ash's voice betrayed his smile before his face did, "y'know, for our next beach party."

"You should," she replied lightly, only half joking, "I think it would bring out your eyes."

He looked back at her as she stopped in the water, now thigh deep. They considered each other for a second, his longer hair dancing across his cheeks in the breeze. She knew if she looked below his neck, she'd see how his body had changed since the Terran ship, how it was different and - the thing that scared her more - how it was the same. She didn't take her eyes any lower than the scruff on his chin, recently tamed into a more respectable beard.

Then she splashed him.

"What the-" Ash spluttered, throwing up his arms to protect his eyes. "Hey!" He tried to return fire, but she'd moved when he looked away and he missed by a mile.

Without thinking, she laughed, and he got a better lock on her location, targeting his next attack perfectly and drenching her in sweet water, not salty like those raised on Earth would expect. She spluttered as it went in her mouth then cried out as he knocked into her, tackling her underwater when she was off-guard.

As the cool water rushed over her head, she suppressed the laughter to close her airways, and felt the mirth flow into her heart like hot tea, quick and direct. They tussled underwater, the water nullifying most of her martial arts grappling training but also preventing him from getting a good hold of her. Besides, she knew where he was ticklish and as she ran her nails over his waist, he jerked away from her and jumped up straight.

She took the opportunity to swim away from him, gaining distance, but when she came up for air, he was laughing. She slowed a bit, switching to a breaststroke-backstroke fusion to watch as Ash flicked the water out of his hair; it caught the sunlight as it fell, glimmering more than freshwater would, and it supported her body better than any other ocean or river she'd swum in. She lent her head back, watching the cloudless sky and hearing the underwater sounds echoing as she swam. _What is, is_, she thought to herself, and she'd never understood that that was more than just a consolation to the heartbroken until now.

Then something pulled at her ankle and she went under, choking.

Water went up her nose, disorienting her as her eyes tried to adjust to suddenly being underwater. A dark shape blocked out the sun above her and she continued to drift downwards - the water had become much deeper than she realised. She resisted the urge to gasp in air and instead centred herself with a technique Sybok had taught her when she first got to Vulcan. Less than a second had passed since she had been grabbed.

The shape above her resolved into Ash, one hand held in a position she recognised as Standard Federation Sign Language for 'race'.

Without a moment's hesitation, she kicked her legs below her and pushed off the ocean floor, using her rush of adrenaline to get a quick start; her arms knew what they were doing, and the second she broke the surface, she was demonstrating a picture-perfect frontstroke, breathing beneath every other rotation of her left arm. She could feel Ash next to her, technique a little sloppier but almost keeping pace, and she if she could just maintain this speed-

They reached the rock within a beat of each other and immediately both surfaced.

"I definitely-"

"I won that-"

"-won that, fair-"

"-for sure, margin was almost-"

"-and square, Burnham!"

"-half a second, easy."

There was silence for a moment as Michael raised an eyebrow.

"No, I-"

"No way, I-"

"-definitely was ahead-"

"-totally touched the-"

"-of you."

"-rock first, hey Saru!"

Saru, who was drifting nearby on an inflatable that might have been a Denebian whale before the designer took considerable artistic license, barely looked over. "It was clearly Michael."

"What!" Ash sounded more enthusiastic than surprised. "Not fair, you weren't even looking, Rhys!"

"She won, Tyler," Rhys replied as he swam towards them, "no doubt."

"Nepotism!" Ash pronounced, and Rhys laughed in his short, loud way. It was a running joke from when they'd all played cards last month and everyone had accused Stammets of helping Tilly cheat - what they hadn't understood, obviously, was that Tilly never needed help when it came to cheating at cards. In the sparkling water, Michael found herself stifling her own laugh.

"Hey, Michael!"

She looked up to see Tilly, poised on the top of the rock.

"Watch this!" And Tilly jumped, tucking one leg up against herself and sticking the other out ramrod straight. It was less than a second before she hit the water, but the image seemed to hold in Michael's mind for longer than that, the contrast between the blue sky and Tilly's red hair trailing behind her almost painterly. She hit the water with a monumental splash that seemed to both spread outwards and send a tall column of water straight up and over onto Saru's Denebian whale. Underwater, Tilly slowed to a stop and kicked back up to the surface, twirling as she went. Her eyes, when she opened them, shone like sapphires.

"A perfect ten," Michael grinned, and Tilly cheered even as she swam out of the way of Saru's attempts to splash her back.

***

The day seemed to Michael to pass in a series of vignettes; she looked on scenes as if out of herself, as if an observer. She saw Stammets beating Reno at ping pong, when he dived for the ball in a last-ditch attempt to break the deadlock and sent the white sand flying. She saw Spock, who had pretended he wasn't reading the Corellia novel over Pike's shoulder as he ignored his own book, a heavy thing on the latest advances in theoretical engineering which had started to fall out of his limp hand. She saw herself, when she looked at Ash as they stood atop the rock, and she had wanted to kiss him for a split second before he'd pushed her back into the water.

"I like this planet," she murmured, smiling down at her hands, glowing pinkish in the twilight as the bonfire burned softly.

"It is rather idyllic," agreed Saru, the only person close enough to have heard her. She considered him, and he smiled back at her.

Without thinking about it, she leaned towards him, resting her forehead against his shoulder, which was blessedly cooler than their surroundings, as it always was. She considered how lucky she was to be here, able to call him friend; the alternatives dizzied her, that he might never have been granted asylum, that they might not both have been assigned to the _Shenzhou_, that upon their reunion on _Discovery_, he might never have forgiven her.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and sat back again to see him looking at her with his kind eyes reflecting the firelight.

"To growth," he said, holding out his glass of Yridian gin and tonic.

"To growth," she echoed, and missed his glass with her beer when she tried to clink them together. They drank anyway.

Over the course of the day, Saru had lost various elements of his clothing and now, as the group fended off post-barbecue food comas, he was wearing nothing but Michael's kaftan. In fact, of their assembled group, Spock was the only person left in their group wearing the clothes he'd come in; everyone else had swapped shirts or was wearing the bare minimum in the warm evening air, or - in the case of Detmer and Owosekun - had gone into the forest and suspiciously reappeared wearing each other's clothes. Pike had lost the sunglasses and somehow gained Tilly's denim shorts, even though Michael had been paying attention and he hadn't even finished one glass of his bougie wine yet. Having just finished her fourth drink, Michael felt this needed fixing, so she pulled herself to her feet.

At the old replicator the ship had beamed down, she found the buttons trickier than usual to figure out. She glared at the menu on the padd as she keyed through to the drinks.

"This is dumb," she announced to whoever was walking up behind her, "I don't understand why they can't just rig the voice navigation to the older models, I mean I understand that the new synthesizers won't do true alcohol, but can't they be hacked?"

"No, I tried," said Spock, voice deep as he deposited a stack of glasses back into the recycler, "and they don't have Chris's favourite rosé either."

"Chris?" Michael turned to him. He blinked back at her. "Are you drunk?"

"Getting there," he said, "can I have another iced chocolate?"

Between them, they got their own drinks and several refills for others who'd shouted orders over, and managed to get them to their recipients without spilling them entirely. This gave time for more people to request drinks, and then more, and by the time Michael and Spock sat back down, 10.2something minutes had passed. Michael would work out the something in a bit. When she settled next to Saru, he patted her leg and let her have a sip of the cocktail she'd brought him.

"What'd I miss?" She asked.

"A deep interrogation of Rhys's dating history, which is varied yet not interesting, a brief enquiry into my own, which is nonexistent, and something cheesy from Paul," he summarised, "so, not much, really."

"Oh, I like when Stammets is cheesy," she pouted.

"You've never seen me cheesy," Stammets said threatneingly, pointing a warning finger from where he was draped across Culber's shoulders on her other side. "I've never been cheesy."

"Not even in your wedding vows?" She teased.

"Excuse you, do you see a ring?" He wiggled his hand in her general direction.

"Wait, you two aren't married?" Ash interjected, then appeared surprised at the volume of his own voice, which brought the several micro conversations round the fire to a halt as they all looked at him, and then at Stammets and Culber.

"No," said Stammets, affronted, "we are not, and I-"

"He doesn't believe in God, and I don't believe in the patriarchal implications of marriage," Culber interrupted. Both his own and Stammets' sunglasses were resting on top of his head.

"But it's romantic!" Detmer said, one scandalised hand pressed to her chest.

"It's a heterosexual construct, based in ancient pagan values that privelage monetary issues over real commitment, and imply that one person has ownership of another," Culbert gestured widely with one arm, "now an Andorian marriage, that I could get behind."

Michael snorted at the double entendre, feeling Saru laugh where they leant on each other. "So, captain, have you ever been..." She trailed off and wiggled her ring finger at him.

"Call me Chris and I might just answer," Pike said smugly. Jeers and laughter rose around the circle, mixing with embers against the purple sky.

"Chris," Spock said, gently, with that slow way of someone who is comfortably pissed. Pike looked at him, raising one eyebrow in a way that made everyone laugh again, but he and Spock locked eyes and didn't look away from each other.

"No," he said quietly, "not really," and he sounded so sad about it that Michael's voice, so ready to press him on it, died in her throat.

"I'm engaged to be married," Spock said, eyes still on Chris's. Next to her, Culber choked on his drink.

"I'm sorry, just," Tilly said, "plot twist of the _century_, what? Who?"

Michael laughed. "T'Pring, T'Pring, light of my life, T'Pring," she winked at Tilly as she worked the name into the Andorian song echoing from the radio.

"All Vulcans are engaged by adulthood," Spock said, his usual dignity somewhat marred by the slurring between the words. "Am I not a Vulcan?"

"I think that's up to you, pal," said Ash, and if she didn't know him so well, Michael wouldn't have realised how seriously he meant that.

Spock finally looked away from Chris, and he blinked at the fire quickly. "I am a Vulcan, then." Even under the buzz of the alcohol, Michael felt something ache under her skin for that kind of conviction.

***

Her final vignette of the night came to her as she looked up at the stars they'd decided too sleep under. She was being absolutely and totally logical by sleeping half under Saru and Tilly, one on each side. Really, wholly logical.

As Saru snored quietly on her left shoulder, Tilly's face pressed against her neck. "Michael?" When she whispered, her lips brushed Michael's skin.

"_Tilly_," she whispered back, pronouncing it as if it were Vulcan. She wondered what her mother tongue really was.

"Are you a Vulcan or a human?"

The question dropped down her throat and into her stomach, blocking her windpipe and mixing with the beer to curdle the sunny afterglow of the day. She opened her mouth then closed it and pressed her face against the top of Tilly's head. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"What I mean is, like, are you engaged to someone else?"

Michael's eyes shot open and she breathed in sharply; Tilly's hair smelled like the sweet water of the ocean and the rich flowers Michael had plaited into her hair. She said quietly, "I am not."

"Oh," Tilly sighed happily, "good. Night night." And that was definitely a kiss, not just the shape of her mouth speaking.

The implications of that sentiment built themselves into cathedrals under Michael's ribs and she tightened her arms around the two bodies pressed close to her own. She glanced up and her eyes met her brother's, his own pupils reflecting the starlight. He blinked at her, and they both knew what it meant, and then they went to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a disco beach episode ! Because these kids have fuckin earned it ! And this concept has been languishing in my drafts for like 9 months but better late than never !
> 
> As much as I'm excited to see disco boldly go next season , I'm gunna miss hot space dad pike and my darling son spock , so I'll keep imagining their awkward affection for each other . Spock's schoolkid crush on Pike is hilarious to me both as a disco dynamic and also a precursor to Spock/Kirk in TOS because its like Spock sees Kirk and is like oh so THAT'S what I wanted Pike to be !
> 
> This is the warmest fluffiest shit I ever did , I'm still so charmed by the idea of everyone in hawaiian shirts and swimming costumes ~ please leave a comment telling me what u thought ! especially if u spotted the star wars reference , i have SO MANY headcannons to discuss and no one to chat on em with . hmu on tumblr at [thisisagaysonlyevent](https://www.thisisagaysonlyevent.tumblr.com) if thats something ur into x


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